Iguodala, Nuggets pound Hornets

Karl's squad improves to 4-1 at home

DENVER -- With the Broncos winning, CU firing coach Jon Embree and the prep football championships, Andre Iguodala picked a bad weekend to go all Carmelo.

But the Nuggets guard, known for his defense and versatility, has been scoring in bunches, folks. In Sunday's 102-84 Pepsi Center win against New Orleans, Dre scored 23 points in 31 minutes, doing so on 8-for-13 shooting with a plus-29. Oh, and Friday night, Iguodala scored 29 points on 11-for-19 shooting. Dude is on fire.

"He's a professional and has worked hard at his shot, but I think sometimes the speed of our game, and how we want to play, I think we've sped him up a little too fast," Nuggets coach George Karl said. "I think he's getting to the times where we want him to be aggressive. He's learning how much we want to penetrate the game.

"I thought Iguodala was not only great offensively - his defense on (point guard Greivis) Vasquez was probably the key to the game. This team can execute with a lot of precision and it didn't happen tonight."

Check this out. In the past three games (he scored 18 at Minnesota), Iguodala has made three 3s in each, 9 for 15 overall. And he made five of six from above the break.

By halftime on Friday, he already had 16 points and the Nuggets had this thing in control.

Asked after the game about his comfort level in his new team's system, Iguodala said, "It's funny, I'm not even all the way there yet. I'd probably say I'm at about 70 percent right now.

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I'm understanding what (Karl) wants, I'm starting to get a better feel for my teammates and where they're going to be at. And we're not even 15 games in yet. I didn't think I was going to hit my stride until January. So hopefully I can stay consistent in the rest of the feeling-out stage, and then in January be just - boom!"

Now, even though it was against bad team without its two-top players, this thing wasn't a given. Last spring, a confident Denver team showed up in New Orleans and lost to the lottery-bound Hornets. And the two teams are 13-13 against one another in past six seasons.

But the Nuggets pushed the basketball all night, deflating the weary road team that has now lost seven consecutive games.

Before the game, Karl said the Hornets (3-9) scared him on video. Afterwards, the coach said, "We just didn't want them to feel confident, we wanted them to feel like a young team struggling to get their feet on the ground. The switching on defense gives a different type of personality."

The Nuggets (8-6) have now won four consecutive games, completing one of the most-bizarre streaks to start a season - three losses, four wins, three losses and, now, four wins again.

Kenneth Faried, "The Manimal" as they call him, gobbled up a game-high 12 rebounds, scoring 14 points too (10 in the opening quarter), giving him his eighth double-double already this season.

Coach George Karl pleads (pleads!) to Ty Lawson to be more aggressive. The Nuggets' offense thrives when Lawson knifes the defense and creates flow (or and-ones). Well, Sunday was one deferring nights, for the first half, anyway. Lawson had just six points at halftime (Denver led by 10), but when the night was over, Lawson had 17 total points, on 8-for-10 shooting.

And Lawson led Denver's explosion in the third quarter, in which the home team outscored the visitors 32-30. Third-quarter explosions are becoming the norm of late.

"That's the point where we wanted to step on their necks and make sure they can't go on a late-game run," Lawson said. "And Andre is playing well, man, he's definitely playing well. He's shooting the ball, getting to the paint, and we need him to keep playing like that. Right now, we're riding him."

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